Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 145

[ecosophia]

We are now in the third year of these open posts. As the phrase "died suddenly" repeats in the mass media like a mantra, statistics for work days lost to illness and all-cause mortality mount up in heavily vaccinated nations, and more and more ugly facts about the official response to Covid spill out into public, we are entering what may well turn out to be the most difficult period of the Covid disaster -- the phase in which denial rises in lockstep with the death rate, and a great many people try not to admit what has been done to them by the people and institutions they trusted. It could get ugly, folks.

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.

Comments

[charlieobert]

This is too precious not to share.

I looked up that Aldous Huxley quote for myself - and this is the response I got from the AI built into the Brave browser I use.

"Medical science has made significant strides in understanding the human body and developing treatments for various diseases. According to Aldous Huxley, “medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left.” This quote highlights the remarkable advancements in medical science, which have led to a better understanding of human health and the development of effective treatments."

...and then it goes on to list them, and ends with a bold fanfare.

Please see facepalm icon.

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! I'm not sure that we've yet managed artificial intelligence, but artificial cluelessness? We've got that down cold.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow. Nothing like artificial intelligence to deepen the wellspring of natural stupidity!

I guess the proverbial 'silver lining' here is that the medical profession's ever-increasing reliance on AI will speed its collapse, and down will come the barriers that are stopping conscientious and knowledgeable practitioners from actually helping people in need.

AI? More like AC!

[(Anonymous)]

AI? More like AC!

Artificial intelligence, not really, more like artificial cliches. First everything that is written and is fed is not intelligent. Everything that is written is a cliche. And cliche in an intelligent person's mind act more like a foreign object that is attacked by the mind's "immune system"and that's intelligences.

The fact that the PMC loves cliches and AI, ahem, ahem AC, is because they are "primed" for cliches they live by cliches, individual collages, and brands and products and meme.

They all aproximate the real thing by imitation. Is a Barbie world. Made in Plastic

I've seen this idea explore in this book which is a pity it didn't got translated to English, pictures and all:

Hans Feree "Van mens tot marionet" - hoe imitatie de menselijke mogelijkheden beperkt tot consumptie

Hans Feree "From human to puppet: how imitation limits human possibilities to consumption."

https://www.bol.com/nl/nl/p/van-mens-tot-marionet/1001004005082031/

Behind the magazine aspect is the most serious book one can read in that format.

[mr_nobody1967]

The thing you have to remember about "AI" is that, like regular computers, it often does and says what its programmers want it to do and say.

[charlieobert]

That deserves meme status.

https://charlieobert.dreamwidth.org/file/4554.png

[(Anonymous)]

"If droids could think, there'd be none of us here." - Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Ep 2

[(Anonymous)]

I started noticing this went Brave introduced their LLM several weeks ago. I'd type in a subject, something like "lettuce" and get served their executive summary in first place at the top of the list. An incomprehencible but actual "word salad" The real funny thing is that after the first dozen lines or so it fades off as if there is more to say but there is no way to expand the rest. The browser also has become oddly slow. I fear it might be compromised. I may have to search for alternatives.

[(Anonymous)]

Utah mom sues AstraZeneca, claiming she was left ‘permanently disabled’ in COVID vaccine trial

https://nypost.com/2024/05/14/us-news/us-woman-sues-astrazeneca-after-claiming-she-was-left-permanently-disabled-by-covid-vaccine/

[(Anonymous)]

And these are being rolled out all across the internet. I wonder how long before this becomes a major factor driving people away from the internet; and how long after that before the internet starts breaking down from lack of human engagement....

Astral weather

[(Anonymous)]

I was wondering what others are thinking of the current astral condition. Early this year it seemed to be clearing up a bit, but now it feels absolutely putrid and I've seen a number of other people remarking on it. What characterizes it now seems like an intense sense of foreboding, the feeling that something terrible and unknown approaching. I've found banishing rituals only clear it up for a short time but it's most intense when lying down to sleep or waking up, daily routines can usually distract from it. Its "odor" seems similar to the specters of the pandemic but at the same time not identical.

Also, this may be completely random but I feel like whenever something really violent (more than usual) is going on in other parts of the world this sense diminishes somewhat. It could be that whatever this stuff is is drawn toward these events when they happen and thus less troublesome to people not involved.

[(Anonymous)]

This puts me in mind of a quote by Representative Thomas B Reed (1839 - 1902) referring to some colleagues 'They never speak without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge'.

This is even worse. We're officially in the Negative Zone. It's all boilerplate stuff with no awareness of the context of the quote or its meaning. If this doesn't clarify that AI doesn't really exist, only a mindless collection of zeroes and ones, nothing will.

JLfromNH

Re: AI? More like AC!

[(Anonymous)]

"From human to puppet: how imitation limits human possibilities to consumption."

I would love for this book to get translated into English.

Citation

[(Anonymous)]

So I looked up the quote a different way.
- Wikiquote says it's misattributed and from a 2018 book: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley#Misattributed
- But this NIH abstract from 2014 cites it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4162690/

So now I definitely don't know what to think :)

Boston Bob

[(Anonymous)]

"It could get ugly, folks."

Isn't it already pretty ugly?

Re: Astral weather

[athaia]

I consider myself as psychically sensitive as a potatoe, and I usually never remember my dreams anymore (I used to have excellent dream recall, and find the fact that it's gone slightly disturbing). And when I do, it's the usual fragmented nonsense.

But last weekend, I had a dream where I said to someone, "did you notice that when a place is run down on the material level, it's also a real cesspit on the etheric and astral levels?" and concluded that I need to recommit to doing the SOP.

The atmosphere that night was... not good. Even my dogs didn't sleep well, and seemed to be plagued by bad dreams.

[(Anonymous)]

Is there a way to turn it off?

Re: Astral weather

[open_space]

When this happens I banish twice (or if I invoked in the morning, I banish before sleep, though not right before, perhaps like an hour before)

The astral weather has been in a storm mode, if there were astral weathervanes, they would be spinning like a gyroscope

[(Anonymous)]

That Huxley quote made me let out a hearty chuckle:)

"AI, on the other hand, is the most embarrassing thing we’ve ever invented in mankind’s time on Earth. Oh, so you can’t do the work? Is that what you’re telling me? You can’t figure it out. This seems to be the justification of AI – I couldn’t do it.

This is something to be embarrassed about. The ad campaign for ChatGPT should be the opposite of Nike. "You just can’t do it."

[...]

What I like is we’re smart enough to invent AI, but dumb enough to need it. And still so stupid we can’t figure out if we did the right thing."

Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian, said this at Duke University last week.

--Collapsenik

[(Anonymous)]

Thankfully, you can turn off those mew Brave "features" unless you will miss the entertainment value of such responses....

Re: Astral weather

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, I've participated in these "astral weather" convos once or twice, so I'll chime in. First a brief recap for context : to me it was from spring 2021 to spring '22 that the world had become putrid like never before. I held on for the rest of '22 and it was finally in 2023 that I felt the air clearing some. I'd agree that sometime a few months ago I thought I felt a burst of ye olde mephitic miasma from the pandemic, but fortunately it didn't last, or didn't stick. So where we at now?! Firstly, I'd also agree with the mentioned sense of foreboding. Secondly, the other element in my neck of the woods (that'd be France), is fatigue, tiredness in the mental area. People and events make less sense, things generally feel more adrift. Strange days, but not altogether suffocating.

[(Anonymous)]

Ever heard of the "dead internet theory"?

Back in 2016, before all the publicly-usable AIs, one company estimated that about 50% of ALL internet traffic was just bots talking to each other.

I assume the ratio is much higher now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory

Re: Astral weather

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not psychic, but I've come to realise that I am very sensitive to psychic "weather".

There was a huge solar storm which hit us at the weekend. Even at our fairly southerly 51° of lattitude, we were treated to an impressive aurora on Friday night.

The couple of weeks beforehand, I'd felt just a background 'rage'. Not at anything in particular, I was just snappy. I also got a lot of solar-related synchronicities. I'm wondering if I picked up on the incoming solar storm.

Our magnetosphere is weakening fast as well, whilst the sun approaches its solar maximum at the end of this year. A sufficiently powerful CME (coronal mass ejection) could knock out virtually every electrical system on the planet. (See the "Great Carrington Event" for one that happened pre-electrical grids)

There's that 'corona' word again as well...

Re: Astral weather

[(Anonymous)]

I'm glad you raised the subject! For the past couple of weeks I was thinking of doing the same but just never got around to it.

My observations are remarkably similar. And it's quite pervasive. Just yesterday my wife (who tends not to talk too much about such things) said to me, "lately there's been this terrible pall - this darkness that permeates everything and makes it impossible to experience joy".

Something truly ghastly seems to be descending the planes. I hate to say it, but quite possibly the Grim Reaper is preparing to have a bumper harvest in 2024...

My black humour is reminding me of the Monty Python film The Life of Brian, wherein all those on crosses sing and whistle the song "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life". We must carry on, regardless of the circumstances, with light in our hearts.

Ron M

Re: Astral weather

[(Anonymous)]

45 degrees here, and I could see the aurora from home, despite living in an area with some pretty intense light pollution. It was truly amazing when I got far enough away from the light pollution, which I'm not sure is a good thing...